I am very grateful to you for sending me the
leaflet[2]
(for the time being, I can only pass it on to the Rabotnitsa
editorial board members here—they have already sent a
letter to Clara Zetkin, with a content similar to yours,
evidently), and also for the offer to send information about
Britain for the C.O. I am in correspondence with a comrade
in London (Mr. Litvinoff), who represents our Party’s C.C.
in the I.S.B.; but of course the more connections we have
with representatives of the Left wing of the International,
the better. I quite agree with you that these representatives
ought to keep closer together, and take common counsel.
And it is with this end in view that I take advantage of
your kind letter to continue the conversation you began.

You don’t seem to agree with the slogan of civil war
quite fully, but assign to it, one might say, a subordinate
(and, I think, even conditional) place, behind the slogan
of peace. And you emphasise that “we need to put forward
a slogan that would unite everyone”.

Let me say frankly that what I fear most at present is
just this kind of blanket unification which, I am convinced,
is the most dangerous and the most harmful thing for the
proletariat. After all, Kautsky has already invented, in
Neue Zeit, an ultra-“unifying”
theory,[3]
which....[1]

Notes

[2]A reference to the appeal to women which Alexandra Kollontai
wrote and sent to Lenin in her letter of November 28, 1914, for
publication in Sotsial-Demokrat. It was not published.

[3]A reference to Kautsky’s articles: =
1) “Die Internationalität und
der Krieg” (Internationalism and War), Die Neue Zeit No. 8,
November 27, 1914; and =
2) “Die Sozialdemokratie im Kriege”
(Social-Democracy in the War), Die Neue Zeit No. 1, October 2,
1914. In “Die Sozialdemokratie im Kriege” he wrote that “if it comes
to war, every nation has to defend itself as best it can. It follows
that Social-Democrats of all nations have an equal right or an
equal duty to take part in this defence; none should hurl
reproaches at another.”